I’d like to invite everyone to take a journey with me over the next year and a half.  It’s a farewell to our beloved farm, and the beginning of a new one.  In the course of it, I hope to give y’all a glimpse into the real life of a farm and the practices of sustainable ranching.  And I'll share a few pictures of our farm, including some adorable baby lambs, along the way.

My husband and I have a small, organic (not-certified) farm just outside of Austin, Texas. I bought this place after I graduated law school ten years ago.   I’ll post about my transition from environmental attorney to farmer another day.  For now, suffice to say that I am a student of holistic management and eco-agriculture.  

This diary is cross posted at
La Vida Locavore

Locavore was the 2007 word of the year (thanks for the correction, A Siegel). And I, for one, am livin' la vida locavore to the best of my overly-lazy ability.

What does it mean to be a locavore (one who eats local food)? A locavore wakes up in the morning, just like anyone else, puts on her hemp clothes and goes off to face the world. No need for a shower - gotta conserve water, you know. Breakfast? The locavore heads outdoors and munches on her lawn. Dandelion greens are healthy, environmentally friendly, and free! Then it's off to the IHOP with the other members of the commune, bringing pictures of dead farm animals to protest those murderers who are eating bacon...

Yeah... not so much. Locavores are mainstream! Locavores appreciate flavor. They want their tomatoes to taste and smell like tomatoes. They don't want their fruit to come with barcodes on it.

Locavores and others who concern themselves with food-related issues make up quite a presence on dKos. There's also a vibrant non-blogger food activist community in practically every part of the country. I am starting a new blog, La Vida Locavore, in hopes of bringing the blog community and the food community closer together.

Did you know that high fructose corn syrup is good for you? Oh yes! So says the Corn Refiners' Association, which is launching an 18-mo $20-$30 million national ad campaign starting tomorrow. Phew! Time to celebrate with a 42 oz. Coke from McDonalds!

In other news, I saw a full page NYT ad this week from "the people's" oil companies, telling me how the real reason they want to drill the caribou up in Alaska is because they love me and want to make my life better. And of course, who can forget previous ad campaigns public service announcements letting us know that obesity is no problem, it's just hype, and that CO2 is natural because we breathe it out and plants breathe it in.

I'm so glad that all of these enormous corporations are on our side! (And I'm even gladder that Michele Simon - a big thorn in groups like the Corn Refiners' Association's side, no doubt - is speaking at Netroots Nation this year!!)

More on HFCS and more on Michele Simon after the flip...

While the Iowa farmers are busy having their crops flooded out, along comes this news from Texas.

.. many Williamson County farmers are still wondering if they'll break even due to soaring gas prices and the drought-like conditions wringing Central Texas dry.

Driving through eastern Williamson County, you can see miles and miles of brown corn stalks. ...      
...Farther south in areas like Seguin and Lockhart, extremely dry conditions have caused some farmers to pull their corn crops altogether.

[cross-posted from the Disaster Accountability Project]

Yesterday, the Washington Post timidly reported that floods in Iowa and other Midwestern states may not be "natural" disasters . However, scientists have long warned that worsening floods are the predictable result of human intervention - of floodplains covered with impermeable concrete and stripped of vegetation; of river channels forced up and out of their beds by constricting artificial levees; of sprawling development offering more victims to raging rivers.  The article's thesis is neither new nor controversial, but the story does include a revelation that deserves immediate, national attention.

Between 2007 and 2008, farmers took 106,000 acres of Iowa land out of the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to keep farmland uncultivated, according to Lyle Asell, a special assistant for agriculture and environment with the state's Department of Natural Resources (DNR)...

This week, San Diego hosted BIO 2008, an international gathering of biotechnology companies, scientists, lawyers, public servants, professors, and even Arnold Schwartzenegger himself. The rest of the local sustainable food community made plans to protest. I made plans to get media access to the conference.

My focus was entirely on food and agriculture, as you might have guessed. I certainly do not lump those doing research to cure cancer into my category of "eco-terrorists." Of course there's an ethical dimension to all biotechnology but I am not the one to make judgments about anything outside my area of expertise, particularly if its intent is saving human lives.

The funniest session I went to was on new media (YouTube, MySpace, Google, and BLOGS!). I'm thrilled to know that I am the bogeyman these multinational corporations are afraid of. Click to read more to help me strike even more fear into the hearts of Monsanto executives!

The recent coverage of our latest round of Midwestern floods has put me in mind of the costs of our addiction to cheap, low-quality food produced with the use of enormous amounts of chemicals and petroleum.  The costs are bad enough during normal times, but, as  this article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune notes, they are exacerbated by flooding:

“The floodwaters that deluged much of Iowa have done more than knock out drinking water and destroy homes. They have also spread a noxious brew of sewage, farm chemicals and fuel that could sicken anyone who wades in.”

Last week I left the laptop unattended and look what happened. Molly the kitten got into some mischief. It wasn't her usual mischief either (pouncing my older, cranky cats who are too busy napping to play with a kitten). She got a bunch of Kossacks to write to the USDA and their Congresscritters about the RMA Risk Management Community Outreach Partnership Program.

Well? The result of our calls and emails (and many other people's calls and emails from around the country) the program ended up with about an extra $500k. Nice job! We could still do better, since the program was still cut by $5.75 million from what it used to get, but at least we didn't come out empty handed for our efforts.

Details on this and on the food panel and party at Netroots Nation are below (and details on STICKY TOFFEE PUDDING too).

The previous diaries I found  on this did not have the list of approved states from the FDA or much about how salmonella could get in or onto our tomatoes. Will give it a shot, forgive me if this seems redundant.

The following diary is entirely a fluff piece about Obama's favorite chili recipe. OK, actually it isn't. Go watch the corporate media on TV if you want that.

Chef Ari LeVaux caught up with Obama to ask him his take on food and farm policy. In my opinion, this is just an appetizer compared to the amount of information I'd really like to get from him, but he does say some important things.

I went to his website and clicked on the Issues tab to check out what he had to say on Agriculture. Hmm. Nothing. So I clicked on Rural. Jackpot. Except for the fact that food and agriculture affects everyone, not just rural Americans. What can I say? We've got some time to work with him between now and November. At least Obama was willing to talk to Chef Ari - the other 2 candidates weren't.

So here's what we know of Obama's take on food/ag policy - plus his favorite chili recipe at the end.

Amazon deforestation in the past 9 months, the wet season, has already exceeded last year's destruction, despoiling an area larger than Delaware. With cloud cover now clearing more deforestation will be revealed and the fire season will begin. The Brazilian government has proven impotent to stop rainforest destruction in the face of spiraling food prices.

Brazil's DETER real-time monitoring system found that more than 430 square miles of forest, an area a bit smaller than the city of Los Angeles, vanished in the month of April, while about 2,300 square miles, larger than the state of Delaware, were destroyed between last August and April.

Deforestation releases massive amounts of CO2, increasing global warming, drought and climate change.

Despite the Bush Administrations finest efforts to squelch any research on Climate Change and Global Warming from reaching the American public, there are some agencies and scientists that continue to do important work and publish important findings that should inform the public and the next administration of these paramount issues.

As China and India continue to develop their economic infrastructures and develop an appetite for consumer goods and increasingly environmentally demanding food consumption patterns (i.e. eating meat), the impact of climate change on the world-wide agricultural community will continue to be felt more intensely.

Beef Feed for China (.pdf)

Anyone who raises livestock can tell you that the price of corn-based feed has skyrocketed over the past few years as more production has been directed towards satisfying the demand for ethanol and foreign markets. Across the country, due to higher costs for not only grain, but water and fuel, cattle producers are feeling the pinch.

What other areas of the agricultural community and biodiversity will be affected by climate change and how will these affect our way of life here in the U.S.A.?

I just changed the title... see if using the word Obama gets this thing a bit more attention. I miss the old DailyKos where people cared about issues.

I've been personally asked by someone I highly respect to blog about this particular topic. I wasn't going to do so initially because, well, it's hard to get interested in a topic that, on the face of it, seems so dull. Not interesting like Scott McClellan's book.

Unfortunately, boring as it may sound, it's important. And it's not actually that boring. Please, please, since this is important enough that others have asked me to get our community involved, please read this and take action, and then pass word along to other progressives to do the same. The deadline for action is THIS Friday, June 6.

What am I talking about? The USDA Risk Management Agency, which had much of its budget cut in the new 2008 farm bill. Don't fall asleep yet. I'll tell you why you should care on the flip, and give you action steps too.

While there is continued emphasis on developing "Carbon Capture and Sequestration" to ensure a continued life for Somewhat Less Dirty Coal (euphemistically called "Clean Coal"), there are win-win-win options for geoengineering and carbon capture, like biochar, that merit far greater attention and active pursuit.  Le Monde reportedseveral days ago on yet another potential path for adapting agricultural practices to capture and sequester carbon from the atmosphere.

I hope you do. I suspect you care about the issues that it concerns. I am going to attempt to put up some specifics and let the chips fall where they may. I know there is not going to be a consensus on this issue, but it needs  to be discussed.

President Bush vetoedthe Farm Bill on May 21st, 2008.  Fortunately, Congress had enough votes to over ride that veto.  Unfortunately, bills in Congress—including the critical Farm Bill—have lost their meaning.  They are simply words on a paper for many young people.

The great minds in Bush's Homeland Security department came up with a doozie this year: let's move the facility where we study the most infectious and dangerous disease among livestock from the isolated island it's now on (accessible only by ferry or helicopter) and put it where there are lots of livestock operations. Brilliant!

Seriously, the Bush administration proposed this, despite the fact that the existing lab has experienced accidents where the virus was released.

A 1978 release of the virus into cattle holding pens on Plum Island, N.Y., triggered new safety procedures. While that incident was previously known, the Homeland Security Department told a House committee there were other accidents inside the government's laboratory.

The accidents are significant because the administration is likely to move foot-and-mouth research from the remote island to one of five sites on the U.S. mainland near livestock herds. This has raised concerns about the risks of a catastrophic outbreak of the disease, which does not sicken humans but can devastate the livestock industry.

Among the big brains at work here is Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, who's all for the move because Kansas is one of the locations under consideration. This despite the fact that in a 2002 exercise, he played the President.

A simulated outbreak of the disease in 2002 — part of an earlier U.S. government exercise called "Crimson Sky" — ended with fictional riots in the streets after the simulation's National Guardsmen were ordered to kill tens of millions of farm animals, so many that troops ran out of bullets. In the exercise, the government said it would have been forced to dig a ditch in Kansas 25 miles long to bury carcasses. In the simulation, protests broke out in some cities amid food shortages.

The hoof and mouth disease can spread like wildfire, carried in the air, in the feed, on feeding utensils, vehicles, clothing, or holding facilities contaminated with the virus. And it can spread between species to any cloven-hooved animal, including wildlife. That means deer and elk could be exposed and carry the virus over a huge range.

Luckily, a couple of Demcoratic congressmen--neither of them Joe Lieberman, whose job it would be as chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee--have stepped in, and conducted an investigation

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration has no evidence to support its contention that it would be safe to move research on highly infectious foot-and-mouth disease to the U.S. mainland near livestock, congressional investigators said Thursday.

Two Democratic committee leaders said it would be foolish and dangerous for the administration to move ahead with those plans, given the risk of an animal epidemic if the virus escapes.... Rep. John Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said plans by the Department of Homeland Security were not only "baffling, but dangerous."

"It will be farmers and ranchers who bear the risk" of the world's most infectious animal-only disease, Dingell said. Rep. Bart Stupak, chairman of the panel's investigative subcommittee, said the move "would be a foolish tempting of fate." Both are Michigan Democrats.

But Rep. Charles "Chip" Pickering Jr., R-Miss., pointed out that a strong bipartisan majority supports a provision in a major farm bill that would allow the move to the mainland. Pickering said a new laboratory would be safe on the mainland including in his state — where Flora, Miss. is one of five finalists for the mainland site.

The one certainty in the debate that has divided the commercial livestock industry: making the wrong choice could bring on an economic catastrophe.

Which is, of course, why the research facility has been isolated on Plum Island for the past half-century. Here's just one more example demonstrating how much the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress really do care about national security. While the disease wouldn't infect humans, the economic devastation an outbreak could incur would qualify it as a potential terrorist threat. There have already been accidents in the research facility, as there always are when humans are involved. What prevented catastrophe in those six accidents was the fact that the outbreaks were confined to the island.

The take-away lesson from this story: Democrats should cede no ground to the Republicans on "national security" this election year.